


After All Of This

by XvoodooXXblueX



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 21:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1873602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XvoodooXXblueX/pseuds/XvoodooXXblueX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After everything, after it’s all ended, the case is done and Susan won’t have him back, Homer takes off after his brother. He leaves Reid a note saying he’ll come back. After all, he’s promised he won’t leave, but he takes off because he can’t sit tight any longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After All Of This

After everything, after it’s all ended, the case is done and Susan won’t have him back, Homer takes off after his brother. He leaves Reid a note saying he’ll come back. After all, he’s promised he won’t leave, but he takes off because he can’t sit tight any longer. 

Homer knows he shouldn’t feel so insulted, so betrayed. He knows his brother and how he is, but maybe that is exactly why he feels like this. He knows his brother.

Homer doesn’t have much to his name but he uses what he has to get himself on a ship, works for the rest and gets himself to America. It’s strange, once he arrives. Somehow he always thought he’d feel more at home, feel more connected there. He doesn’t.

It takes him a long time from then to find Daniel, but in the end, Homer tracks him down just outside Dawson City, Canada. He should have fucking known.

The first thing Homer does when he sees Daniel is to punch him in the face. Then he makes Daniel show him what’s left of the money they’d got for the diamond. By some miracle, it’s more than he’d expected.

\---

They sit down and discuss the matter over far too many drinks. Homer wants his share. They negotiate and end up on a 60/40 share of what’s left. Homer isn’t quite happy with that, wants half, but he’ll get his brother there eventually. He skilfully sidesteps Daniel’s questions about Susan but knows that his brother knows. He hates it and he hates his brother for being right. A few drinks later he loves his brother again.

\---

They come in the night, two of them, busting the door down and yelling for Daniel. He’s conned them out of money - of course he has. Fucker.

Both Daniel and Homer grab their guns but neither of them is sober and one of the men hauls Homer from behind and puts a gun to his head.

Daniel won’t give them what they want, tries to talk himself out of it, even with Homer at gunpoint. The absolute fucker. Homer wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s a fucker, too.

When one of the men makes to search for money, Daniel lunges. A shot is fired and the ensuing confusion gives Homer the time to free himself. He drops and spins for his gun and shoots both attackers.

\---

The shot hits Daniel straight in the throat. Homer cradles his brother as he bleeds out, beyond Homer’s help, and tells him everything; speaks to him of all the things they’ve never had time to speak of. Some time close to dawn, Homer steals a shovel. You don’t go asking for one if you don’t want anyone to know you’re burying a body.

\---

He buries Daniel in a patch of nearby woods. He’s not crying. It’s started raining. Homer returns to the room Daniel had rented and takes the bag with the money and a few of Daniel’s meagre belongings. He leaves the two dead men where they lie in their blood, leaves them for the local law to find and deal with. He’ll be long gone by the time they're likely to show up, or so he hopes. Reckless, maybe, but Homer is beyond giving a shit. About anything, really.

He makes his way back to the coast, passes through towns and cities with an empty heart pumping blood of whisky and other, more illicit substances. Homer briefly remembers the heroin. He briefly considers forgetting how ill it had made him. That thought, as all others, slips his mind before he can fully grasp it. A few days later, Homer boards a ship bound for England.

\---

It’s pissing rain when he arrives. Of course it is.

He drops off the money, what he hasn’t used to pay for his passage, at Tenter Street. He doesn’t want it, not for himself, hasn’t for a long time. He doesn’t see Susan.

\---

It’s late night or early morning by the time Homer breaks into the station, barely sober enough to complete the task. But the station’s empty and warmer than the outside. He tries the door to the dead room, realises it’s locked and jimmies it open.

Homer goes straight for the cabinet where he keeps his whisky. It’s gone. Fuck. Well, he thinks, plenty of other options in here to help him to a good night’s sleep.

\---

It’s not a good night’s sleep and it ends with someone yelling at him and kicking him in the ribs. Homer groggily pries his eyes open to stare at an enraged man, probably in his fifties. Homer asks him if he can have his dead room back. It only gets him dragged up and into an office; Reid’s office.

\---

“Jesus Christ, Jackson,” Reid exclaims upon seeing Homer.

Reid tells the other man, Lister, that he can go. It’s been months, Reid explains and Homer is grateful for it, because he’s lost track of the time long ago. Reid explains they had to get a replacement surgeon, even knowing Homer would come back.

“You look like Hell,” Reid says.

Homer waves him off feebly.

“Can I have my dead room back?” he asks, squinting at Reid. Even the dim light of the office makes Homer’s eyes sting and head throb.

“Jackson…”

“Danny’s dead.” The words leave his mouth, having already chased his last thought from his mind.

Reid is quiet for a moment, his expression is passive, but he must have seen something in Homer’s face because after a moment he haltingly says: “I… I’m very sorry.”

Homer nods.

“Can I have my dead room back?”

Reid sighs and gets up, crossing to where Homer is sitting, beginning to help him out of the chair.

“When you’re better,” Reid says.

“I’m fine,” Homer protests.

Reid looks at him sadly.

“When you’re better, of course you can.”


End file.
